Oil& Gas

Just like with the handheld drill that we all know, so with the very deepest drilling, efforts have been made in the industry, to integrate mechanical hammering action with rotational movement, in order to increase drilling speed.

Conventional mechanical hammering, however, has been seen to meet with difficulties. It is not sufficiently efficient.

Leading firms in the field already understand that the future solution will be high frequency drilling.

Placidus, in partnership with NASA, JPL and CalTech, is bringing a novel Ultrasonic Hammering Technology to oil, gas and mining drilling.

Against a background of years of development in NASA’s top laboratories, we are bringing to market a unique technology, advanced greatly beyond the capabilities currently existing in the field.

Our approach is simple: this technology will replace yesterday’s hammer drilling in every industry which has been using it. It does not matter to us whether we are talking about a hand-held drill or a rig working at great depths.

Ultrasonic drilling and hammering technology was used to develop a novel rotary percussive Auto Gopher drill for deep subsurface penetration and sampling that is compact, with relatively low mass and uses relatively low power. The tool is capable of producing volatiles, powdered cuttings and cores from rocks, ice permafrost and other soft or hard media. This capability addresses one of the key goals of the NASA exploration missions allowing for sampling from great depths of planetary subsurface using a compact drill and low axial load.

Nevertheless, the capability is significant and revolutionary for the oil and gas exploration industry since it overcomes challenges that are inherent to other deep drills that include being heavy and requiring high axial preload.

Rather than requiring a long drill or a mechanism that involves addition of mass to the penetrator bit for reaching larger depths, the Auto Gopher operates cyclically by reeling it down on an active tether mechanism to produce a borehole.